Bit of pondering here today. Lucy came over with Rebecca and Richard but the children took an age to shake down and get on with themselves. Infact they didn’t really manage it at all. I think the problem with my two is that they are very self sufficient – minor sibling scuffles aside they tend to play together most of the time. They both have periods of time out – either by occupying themselves individually or by one of them being with me but really they spend most of their days playing together. Which is great, I love it 🙂 But it does mean that when someone comes to visit who is only really a playmate for one of them it becomes slightly awkward. It doesn’t happen very often – Julie has Jack and Maisie and increasingly Jack does hero-worship of Davies while Maisie and Scarlett play with dollies or other such girlie stuff, Mel brings Liam and Lily so the boys spent their whole time in Davies’ bedroom while the girls stay with me & Mel or play in Tarly’s room, when we see Ros Davies plays with Adam while Scarlett is ‘looked after’ by Amelia & Ellie, at Alison’s Davies plays with Lije while Tarly plays with Lulah – you get the picture… Infact I think the only lone child we see regularly is Ali’s Freya and somehow because she is inbetween them in age the three of them manage really well with no odd one out – either the girls do something, Davies and Freya play together while Tarly hangs out with me and Ali or all three of them charge round together. But Rebecca is very shy and clingy to Lucy anyway so takes quite a lot of enticing away to play and Lucy clearly says to her that she is here to play with ‘Scarlett’ rather than ‘Davies & Scarlett’ (I know cos she said it about 4 times today!) and it just doesn’t seem to work. Davies does his very gentlemanly act of being really keen to include Rebecca (Ali, you know this act 😉 ) which then annoys Tarly who is jealous that *her* brother is paying attention to someone else and is then horrid to her, or Tarly and Rebecca find some common ground game which by definition seems to exclude Davies.
I actually preplanned today and got out all of the children’s pretend food and tea sets, their play money and electronic till and suggested they set up a ‘shop’ and ‘cafe’ and take turns to go shopping and so on. It didn’t happen at all, which if nothing else taught me a lesson about telling children how to play ;-). So after Davies & Scarlett disappeared upstairs to play together having given up trying to get Rebecca to go with them and leaving Lucy being hassled to go and play with her instead after some lunch I set Davies up with some games on the pc which he suddenly finds easier by virtue of managing to read some of the on screen stuff and Scarlett and Rebecca *finally* went off to play together. Lucy and I managed some good chats and they ended up staying for about 5 hours so it all ended OK.
But it did strike me watching Davies try and lead the girls in one of ‘his’ games, which actually Tarly normally happily joins in with that there is one aspect of school life which I simply cannot replicate for him at home. It is what I know he will spend most of next week doing and having a whale of a time and what I think he is actually craving a little. That is the lunch hour he would spend charging round the playground yelling at the top of his voice and pretending to fight monsters, run away from pirates and generally being a boisterous boy. I know that he needs to feel comfortable with a group before that comes out in him and I know that there are still some situations where he would be able to get that but would not fare so well (I saw that from observing him at TT towards the end) but I do think he needs to spend a little more time with boys, being a boy and getting rid of some of the boy energy and volume. I’ve looked at Boys Brigade but it just is too scary ‘Christian Youth Organisation’ from the website, Beavers (scouts) doesn’t start until he’s six (although that will be something to look into cos it’s literally round the corner) and I need to do some real detective work to track down someone to speak to about Badgers. I could also look into stuff like football too I guess. I don’t want to load our week’s up with commitments and things which will end up being a chore and obviously at the moment our finances don’t allow for any expensive activies but I imagine there is plenty out there for very little cost which would offer what I think he needs. I did do this exercise about six months ago and none of it came to anything in the end but I will have another go at sorting at least a couple of trials of various things out when we get back from Melrose. I also think we might think about something like swimming at the weekend when all four of us could go and get some exercise and various combinations of bonding.
What else? Not a lot really, I forgot to blog yesterday that we’d caught about ten minutes of one of those birth stories programmes on the TV and Davies had been fascinated by it. Ady had talked to him a bit about how babies come out and we’d explained again that he was born in hospital but Tarly was born at home and then we got out their baby books. Davies ended up with 3 different ones – one we bought, one my parents bought and one from my Granny. And I’d been consciencious enough to fill all three out so we looked at pictures of me and Ady before he was born, pictures of me pregnant, pictures of everyone meeting Davies for the first time, his hospital tag, first footprints and stuff like the dates he did stuff for the first time (first crawl, first word, first steps etc) which he loved. Scarlett was slightly less interested in hers and was probably most taken with the picture of her meeting Davies for the first time at 2 hours old – and that was only because Davies has a dummy in the picture and she didn’t realise he’d used to have one apparently!! 🙄
Anyway, Lucy and I ended up telling birth stories and comparing experiences so the books came out again and we had one of those ‘if I had another one I’d do this, that, the other differently next time’ conversations. Based on the security of not having any more I of course would plan all sorts of wacky things I know I will never have to live up to ;-).
This afternoon I’ve spent ages playing at menu planning, shopping lists for five week rotational meals preparation and other such mental tupperware type tasks, Davies has played more with the pc and the wooden blocks I got out for Richard to play with, he’s watched Nightmare Before Christmas and I realised that he already knows all the words to all the songs on that and he’s played some game upstairs with his dinosaurs. Oh and he tried mango for the first time and loved it! Scarlett has also played with the wooden blocks, been sent to her room for various offences and left a trail of strawberries on the kitchen floor. 🙄
I’m feeling generally shouty and cabin feverish today after a weekend of being indoors and some crappy nights sleep. Tomorrow we’re over at Julie’s so hopefully if the weather is OK we might get out for a walk. Thursday we’re packing and preparing and then on Friday we’re off to Lynda & Stuart’s in Manchester for a two night stay on the way to Melrose, which I suddenly realised means I have not a hope of baking anything to bring as it will be 4 days old by the time we get there. Being away for a full week and coming in Ady’s weeny car means we won’t have space to bring any toys or other exciting stuff and when I asked the children about bringing fancy dress this morning they both said they didn’t want to anyway so hopefully cooking a meal one night and my generally sparkling company will be enough of a contribution to bring to the Melrose table! 😉
Lol, the BB and GB *are* very Christian, but I figure that some knowledge of Bible stories is actually part of our culture, and 5 or 10 minutes a week is a reasonable trade-off 🙂
A couple of days after BB – after he’d told me all the interesting stuff about making a fire engine and playing some kind of running around game – Lije said they’d had a story. It went something like this: “Someone went on a ship, and the others threw him off and a really really big fish – I think it was a whale, and it was TWICE as LONG as the room we were in and TWICE as HIGH, can you imagine that, a whale TWICE as LONG and TWICE as HIGH as a room?????? – swallowed him. And then after years and years, the whale reached the beach and opened its mouth and the person came out. And some gods talked to him and he went somewhere to do something.”
So so far they’re not scoring too highly on the successful religious indoctrination front 😉
Comment by Alison — 07 February 2006 @ 7:12 pm
I imagine beavers might be more un-religious. I used to help at one and it wasn’t religious then and Rainbows/Brownies is very PC now “promise to love MY god” being the key Promise phrase, rather than “love God.”
Ask Deb W perhaps? She runs one.
Lol at Lije 🙂
Comment by Merry — 07 February 2006 @ 8:57 pm
Ah I love Davies’ gentlemanly inclusion and persuasion techniques, they’re so thoroughly decent!
Good drama groups for children of his age will include a bit of running and shouting and will also start helping them to channel those feelings and control them, not suppress, but control/direct them.
And it was nice of you not to mention the times when Freya is just horribly unsociable. On the whole though, they do work well as a three, luckily.
Comment by Ali — 07 February 2006 @ 9:29 pm
Lol @ Alison & Lije 🙂 I just worry that D is already God-curious and I don’t want to lead him to their clutches! 😉 I have this utter fear that in true acts of rebellion Davies will become a priest and Tarly will be a future Labour Prime Minister! And they’ll both be all sensible with money – I can already see myself as Edina from AbFab in so many ways 🙄
And yeah Ali he is a thoroughly decent young chap isn’t he!
Comment by Nic — 07 February 2006 @ 10:54 pm
Can’t imagine Tarly as Saffy, myself 😉
Even I dislike the christian parts of BB/GB to a certain extent, as they are simply too trad and ‘black and white’ for me, if that makes any sense at all – but like anything else, it’s a very small time slot in a day/week/lifetime and there are plenty of other things which will be far more influential, imo.
Comment by Sarah — 07 February 2006 @ 11:14 pm
We really like the ethos of Woodcraft folk – that has ‘woodchips’ for the under sixes. It is not religious at all and has all the nice camp and trips stuff for when they’re older.
Comment by Allie — 07 February 2006 @ 11:27 pm
We tried the Woodcraft Folk here as I also liked the ethos and the thought of the camps, but Poppy hated it, too chaotic for her. (Tilda hadn’t wanted to go anyway, and I didn’t even consider it for Lije as it’s the same night as GB and that would just be too hard to juggle!) I think that the feeling, the atmosphere of the group is more important than anything else tbh.
Comment by Alison — 08 February 2006 @ 9:51 am
I have looked at it as I’ve read about P & L doing it on your blog and it sounds pretty good, and a couple of other people recommended it too. But the nearest one to us is Lewes, so it’d be a half hour drive (on a good day) and the timing meant I’d have to drag Tarly along for the ride as Ady wouldn’t be home from work to have her. Going to try and sort out Beavers again and also look into football – he may well surprise me by not being the quivering, hiding from the ball heap I am imagining he might be…
Comment by Nic — 08 February 2006 @ 10:05 am
I have looked at it as I’ve read about P & L doing it on your blog and it sounds pretty good, and a couple of other people recommended it too. But the nearest one to us is Lewes, so it’d be a half hour drive (on a good day) and the timing meant I’d have to drag Tarly along for the ride as Ady wouldn’t be home from work to have her. Going to try and sort out Beavers again and also look into football – he may well surprise me by not being the quivering, hiding from the ball heap I am imagining he might be…
Comment by Nic — 08 February 2006 @ 10:05 am
Well if you did fancy giving the Lewes woodcraft folk a go, you could always come here for a cuppa with Tarly, of course, you would be very welcome.
Comment by Ali — 08 February 2006 @ 10:12 am